Science advances every day in a world where scientists are attempting to do what was previously thought to be impossible and are producing remarkable results.

What is perhaps the most impressive of these inventions comes about through the use of nanotechnology, which allows scientists to manipulate materials on the atomic or molecular scale.

While these advancements have been seen as miraculous by the scientific world, others, such as religious leaders and followers, are not so keen on the idea of science taking the place of God, genetically changing organisms and creating life.

Two University of Wisconsin researchers, along with three colleagues from other universities, decided to take a look at this trend in a recently published report, “Religious beliefs and public attitudes toward nanotechnology in Europe and the United States.”

Dietram Scheufele, a UW professor of life sciences communication and sociology and the main author of the study, and Tsung-jen Shih, a UW fellow for the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, looked at the link between a country’s religiosity and their acceptance of nanotechnology.

“Nanotechnology [is] one of the most influential technologies in the last 20 years in how it changed science,” Scheufele said. “It is expected to bring in $3.1 trillion in revenue by 2013 and most people know very little about it.”

According to Scheufele, the idea for the study came from previous research that linked religiosity with the acceptance of stem cell research.

They partnered up with people in Europe and ended up doing surveys in the United States and almost 30 countries in Europe. From that, they took the top 12 nations that provide the most funding for nanotechnology and found the one key influence in the acceptance of nanotechnology was religion, or how important God is in the lives of citizens.

“Our analyses show a robust relationship between levels of religiosity and public support for nanotechnology across all countries. … Our findings reinforce the idea that public attitudes toward issues such as nanotechnology are increasingly driven by personal values and beliefs,” according to the study.

The study did not only look at religion when polling for acceptance of nanotechnology, but also used several control factors.

One of the controls was the ratio of academic nanotechnology publications to the public funding for each country, but the study found no significant link.

The other factor was the science performance of high school students in each country. While there was a moderately positive relationship, it was not significant or anywhere near as strong as the inverse relationship found between religiosity and the moral acceptability of nanotechnology.

The United States of Religion

While the study took a look at countries all over Europe, the main focus was on public opinion in the United States.

According to the study, “respondents in the United States were significantly less likely to agree that nanotechnology is morally acceptable than respondents in many European countries.”

When polled on a scale of one to 10 on how important God is in the respondent’s life, the average response in the United States was between an eight and a nine, whereas in France and Germany, the average response was between four and five.

“That doesn’t mean they aren’t religious people,” Scheufele said. “It simply means on average how much importance do they attribute to religiosity. In the U.S., according to the population, religion matters much more.”

According to the study, more than 70 percent of those polled in the United States did not think nanotechnology was morally acceptable. They also did not approve of nanotechnology being used “under any circumstance” or only approved of it “under very special circumstances.”

Of the 30 percent who found nanotechnology morally acceptable, 90 percent of them approved of nanotechnology “as long as the usual levels of government regulations are in place” or “if it is more tightly regulated.”

However, the extreme religiosity of the United States is extremely paradoxical in many ways, according to Scheufele.

“If you look at U.S., given the U.S.’s GDP levels, given our levels of education and everything else, we really don’t fit into the group of highly religious countries,” Scheufele said. “It’s a strange pattern.”

Scheufele added the United States is the top funder of nanotechnology, top producer of research regarding nanotechnology and has the most nanotechnology consumer productions on the market than anywhere else in the world.

While this may seem contradictory, Scheufele attributes this to the wide applicability of nanotechnology.

Not every application of nanotechnology is controversial. According to Scheufele, nanotechnology is mostly being used for medicine, food production and in other minor products such as car paint, khakis and golf clubs.

It is when nanotechnology is used for unnatural processes that controversy arises.

According to the study, nanotechnology is currently being used in genetically modified organisms. In the future, it may also enable scientists to create life and intelligence without “divine intervention” through the use of “nano-bio-info-cogno technologies.”

“Europe was given $30 million for synthetic biology and trying to create life from scratch,” Scheufele said. “That goes against the very core of many people’s religious beliefs.”

Religions respond

Due to the controversial aspect of nanotechnology and the apparently high religiosity of the United States, Christian and non-Christian religions across Madison had much to say about nanotechnology and its steps toward “playing God.”

John Swanson is an associate pastor at Bethel Lutheran Church on Wisconsin Avenue in Madison. His church is a part of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, one of three and the more liberal branch of Lutherans, according to Swanson.

“The way I understand technology is that it is a gift that God has given us,” Swanson said. “We have the ability to use technology and it can be a wonderful gift, but like most things … it can be taken to an extreme that can be negative.”

According to Swanson, technology is very useful in fields such as medicine, but when it comes to creating a human being, it becomes a “sticky situation.”

He added the Lutheran Church does not have an official opinion yet on creating clones and things of that nature, but added it is an issue that really needs to be studied further.

“I would certainly say we need to exercise extreme caution when doing anything like that because of the potential danger or at least a lot of questions haven’t been looked at,” Swanson said.

Jonathan Biatch, a rabbi at Temple Beth El on Arbor Drive in Madison, agreed that nanotechnology could be useful, but has concerns about its safety as well as its efficacy.

“Judaism welcomes technological advances, any kind, and uses them as long as it is helpful to humanity,” Biatch said. “Technological advances are not in themselves evil. They are useful and beneficial, except when they are used for wrong purposes.”

According to Biatch, wrong purposes would include moving ahead with technology that is not well tested or understood before it is used on the public.

“Especially with nanotechnology, I think that as we don’t understand completely what happens in genetically modified organs and how they affect the food chain, so too we do not yet understand what nanotechnology does to an animal or a human body when exposed to them,” Biatch said.

As for the term “playing God,” which is used in the study as one of the objections used by religious groups against nanotechnology, both Swanson and Biatch don’t believe that is an appropriate term to describe what nanotechnology is doing.

According to Swanson, what nanotechnology does or may do in the future is not what God does. He said technology is trying to control others and control the environment while he believes God gives us free will to choose our own path.

“Technology can give us so much power that we are tempted to control ourselves and control other people,” Swanson said. “I don’t see God actually doing that. … In fact, it’s the opposite of what God actually does. He gives us the free will, and we can choose to do the right and thing or mess up.”

Biatch echoed Swanson, saying that as far as Judaism is concerned, God gave humanity the mind to think, the ability to deduce conclusions, the ability to experiment and to succeed or fail.

“I see this as using the minds God gave us to improve life,” Biatch said. “It’s not a matter of playing God. God and humanity are partners with one another in the ongoing act of creating the world. God does not act in the world, humans do.”

Implications nationally and internationally

The study’s implications about citizens of the United States expand beyond religiosity but also the way Americans think about technology.

According to the study, levels of knowledge about nanotechnology in the United States have stayed consistently low since 2004.

The study also showed how the United States public is not looking for more scientific information, but rather for a debate about the moral or religious concerns that shape their interpretations of the information.

Finally, it also showed the United States is focused mostly on novel applications or scientific breakthroughs in nanotechnology rather than the specific risks of the new technology.

“Values … go hand-in-hand with other shortcuts, such as affective reactions to new technologies or trust and deference toward scientific authority,” the study said.

The repercussions of this study were not only felt in the United States, but will also be relevant when it comes to international regulations.

According to Scheufele, the first attempts to regulate nanotechnology at the national level have already come out of Canada in the form or reporting requirements from companies.

He added that countries enforcing different regulations can be ineffective. He cited researchers going to Singapore to do research they were denied access to in the United States.

“The last thing we want is highly trained scientists to leave,” Scheufele said. “The solution is we need to get together internationally and figure out how to regulate nanotechnology that addresses concerns among members of the public and creates a climate where we can do research and where we don’t have brain drain in one country.”